September 2021 Car Rental Watch

[Gina-Gina-Bo-Bina]

We are less than 60 days out from travel, and haven't yet seen a car rental thread for September....so I thought I would start one. Perhaps with these abysmal rental rates, I'm the only one silly enough to rent a vehicle that month? lol

At any rate, hopefully a few others will join me in looking for deals. I'm currently booked with Alamo through Costco, a full size car September 4 to 11, $554 (which includes the free extra driver).

 

[lynnfitz]

Just to give a little hope to you, August rates just came down today (not much, but a little!)

 

[DsneyDude1]

I am booked with Dollar 9/11-9/18. Need a larger vehicle so have a standard SUV. $581 before fees, etc. for the week.

 

[HRCCrazy]

I’m book for 9-17 to 9-24 with National

Right now I’m book at CCC for a week for $233 full-size car

I also book at the airport with getting in at 6 am and returning at airport at 3 pm means an extra day for $287 for emerald aisle
Just not sure how the pickings will be at 6 am ?

I check with my HR department and there was a discount code which cut the cost by almost in half, and in the rules you have to show work ID and employee number or I will give it out, So check for codes.

 

[georgina]

It's nice you have a corporate discount! We're retired

Sept 25-Oct 4, Alamo through Costco, $607 intermediate

As an alternative I also have 1 night Sept 25-26 from MCO to CCC for $104, and another from CCC to MCO Oct 1-4 for $266, but I'm not sure I want to deal with the drop off/pickup/shuttle. If the rental desk at the Dolphin opens before then I will switch to there.

 

[PatMcDuck]

Costco Travel, booked Budget, Intermediate SUV, Sept 24-Oct 3, $535. Current lowest Costco price is $888 Alamo (my usual company to use).

 

[holyrita]

Yay! Have been waiting for this thread

Have a week booked at CCC through Costco, $221.48 for a fullsize car
Have the same week booked at MCO directly with Alamo, $342.28 for an economy car

Can't decide if I want to pay $120 more to pickup/drop off at MCO and skip the counter, or save $120 and take ME to/from MCO and deal with the CCC

Also eyeing the same week booked at MCO with Budget via UT, $192.40 for an economy car (haven't booked that one yet because the Budget lines are terribleeeee)

 

[Gina-Gina-Bo-Bina]

Still no movement on my rate with Alamo through Costco. Literally not so much as a dollar difference. This is so boring LOL.

I did check Dollar today, and notice that their "Pay Now" rates are pretty good for our dates. I'm VERY torn. With our Alamo/Costco booking, we get the free extra driver (which we don't normally use, but is nice to have in a pinch if needed) and we know we get to pick our vehicle (and may end up with something better than reserved). We also get to go straight to the garage, and skip the insanity of the counter lines. Thus far, we've never had a problem with Alamo either.....or at least, one that wasn't quickly made right by them. And we have rented from them probably 18 times of the last 22 trips, so we are pretty regular renters.

With Dollar, the car is assigned. We've rented from them twice before, and the car has been fine. It's been a while, but we could go straight to the garage the last time we rented from them, which is the only reason their rates are causing me to pause and consider them. Is it worth an additional $50-100 to go with what we know best? If we do the "Pay Now" rate and Alamo drops closer to our departure day in early September, how easy....or hard.....is it to cancel with Dollar?

Budget is a hard no. They are the ONLY company with whom we have rented that we have had consistent problems with. Once they didn't have a vehicle for us at all, and tried to tell us they wouldn't offer our prepaid reservation (we ended up waiting HOURS in the terminal and eventually got an SUV.....but it started our trip off miserably). The second time, when we gave them a chance to redeem themselves, the vehicle we rented had such a stench inside that it gave my son an asthma attack every time we rode in it. [Yes, in hindsight we should have mentioned it to the garage attendant and asked for a different car, but again we had waited so long to get to this assigned vehicle that we didn't want to waste any additional time on swapping it out......lesson learned] . I won't give them a 3rd chance to negatively impact our holiday.

Decisions, decisions!

 

[Gina-Gina-Bo-Bina]

Ah, never mind.....I just checked the Dollar "Pay Now" terms.

• Cancellation within same calendar day of when reservation was booked: No charge.
• Cancellation more than 24-hours prior to scheduled pick-up: subject to a $50 fee.

And more troubling yet....

Charges will appear as 'Hertz' on your credit/debit card statement

After hearing that Hertz has been arbitrarily raising rates exponentially on existing bookings and refusing to honor original prices, this one is a hard pass. I didn't realize Dollar was a Hertz company.

I guess I will sit tight with my Alamo booking.

 

[KK505]

Thanks for starting this thread. We are in need of a minivan or SUV in September and we’re thinking Costco would be the way to go. I see many people talk about skipping the counter and going straight to the car—is this a Costco-wide perk or only applies to specific companies?

 

[georgina]

Thanks for starting this thread. We are in need of a minivan or SUV in September and we’re thinking Costco would be the way to go. I see many people talk about skipping the counter and going straight to the car—is this a Costco-wide perk or only applies to specific companies?

It is not from Costco. I am an Alamo Insiders member which allows me to check in ahead and skip the counter, just go to the garage and pick any car in my category aisle. I love it! Other rental companies have something similar but I am not that familiar with them.

 

[KK505]

It is not from Costco. I am an Alamo Insiders member which allows me to check in ahead and skip the counter, just go to the garage and pick any car in my category aisle. I love it! Other rental companies have something similar but I am not that familiar with them.

Oh ok, thank you for clarifying!

 

[georgina]

Now SW has changed my flight so my rental pick up time is not right and it is more expensive to rebook. I think I will just wait some to see if rental prices drop.

 

[Gina-Gina-Bo-Bina]

Check your rates, September friends. My booking has gone down from $554 to $518 (Alamo through Costco) AND we were able to get a truck instead of a full size car [which makes for a happy DH, as he is a truck guy].

We are early September, the 4th to 11th.

Dare I hold out hope that we might get down to something under $500 by the time we travel?

 

[Gina-Gina-Bo-Bina]

My rate is down again today.....and we have officially achieved our goal of being under $500

Our Alamo via Costco booking (with a free extra driver) from September 4th to 11th is down an additional $31 to $487.

 

[Lynne G]

Yep, a slight discount for end of September. I always use Costco code, and now under 900 for 2 weeks. Still ridiculous compared to past rentals, but I really like having a car. Cancel and repeat. Will be doing that until I’m ready to board the plane.

 

[PatMcDuck]

My flights changed too, I have a Costco rental with Budget. I have had to change it twice in the last week, as both flights changed coming and going. I was able to do it on the Budget site and the cost only changed by a few $$. One was 3 hours, the other was by one hour.

 

[artesian]

Here's a trick I did that got me a descent rate in Aug. Take your rental car company confirmation and put it in autoslash. It will check for lower rates and email you with results if they fins a lower one. I took my mine that was $504 at the CCC and got a larger car at MCO for $395. It does take a little work being each increment down I did a new autoslash request and got me to that rate. Also Costco dropped quite a bit 8 days before I'm leaving so keep vigilant there too

 

[archdandy]

Following along. As it is currently I can't afford to pay those prices for a car rental so I'm hoping they come down.

 

[georgina]

I hadn't checked lately, but with the activity on this thread I did just now. My Sept 25-Oct 4 rental dropped considerably, now a compact for $523 (Alamo thru Costco). My previous amount was $608, and more recently it had been showing up around $650 when I checked, so that is a good start.

OK, so this is really weird - when I went to cancel my previous reservation it had a heading of 'electric car'. Don't remember seeing that before!